At least 18 foreign ISIS fighters, including Americans and Europeans, were killed in a Syrian air raid Thursday, Sept. 4, over their Raqqa HQ. A second Syrian air raid killed or injured another group of high ISIS officers at Abu Kamal near the Iraqi border. A day earlier, US jets struck an IS base in the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar, killing its commander, Abu Hajar Al-Sufi, and two top lieutenants of ISIS chief Abu Baker Al-Baghdadi. All these actions owed their success to deepening US-Iranian military and intelligence cooperation. Is this Obama's unadmitted strategy?

US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel Sunday March 30 instructed Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO’s supreme commander in Europe, to set out at once from Washington to Brussels for consultations with alliance commanders on a possible Russian invasion of Moldova’s Russian-speaking breakaway enclave of Transnistria, after Crimea. Chairs of both US House and Senate Intelligence Committees report Russian forces massed on Ukrainian borders, as well as covert forces inside the country. Some reports claim a Russian buildup in South Ossetia too for a possible thrust into Armenia.

January was the bloodiest month of the Syrian conflict. US Secretary John Kerry was quoted by US Senators McCain and Lindsey as admitting that administration Syrian policy had failed and a new strategy was indicated. Yet State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki accused the senators of “mischaracterizing" his remarks. NSA Susan also rose to Kerry’s defense to reprove Israelis for criticizing him. Jerusalem has meanwhile rejected as unpractical the proposal for US-led NATO forces to take over anti-terror tasks from the IDF in a Palestinian state.

The shock Thursday, Aug. 29, of David Cameron’s parliamentary defeat, knocking America’s foremost partner, Britain, out of the coming strike against Syria, highlighted American public opposition to the operation and criticism in the top US military command. The White House stressed the US would act unilaterally. Nonetheless, the Syrian conflict continues to be covered in confusion, much of it generated by the Obama administration’s conflicting policies. The breakdown of Obama’s coalition for Syria strikes at the heart of NATO and undermines US prestige in the Middle East.

debkafile exclusive: In the last 48 hours, Europeans and NATO have delivered to the Syrian rebels shipments of the long-demanded anti-air and tank missiles as well as recoilless 120 mm cannons.They landed in Turkey and Jordan and were transferred to southern Syria and Aleppo, where Syrian rebels are poised to fend off a major Syrian army offensive backed by 2,000 Hizballah troops. Accordingly, the Obama-Putin meeting went badly at the G8 summit in Northern Ireland. Widely expected Russian reprisals portend a longer Syrian war.

NATO commander Adm. James Stavridis’s Plan B for Syria would aim straight at Bashar Assad’s ouster but would not require the participation of US forces – only NATO units led by the Turkish military and supported by small special ground contingents from Britain, France, Holland, Poland and the Czech Republic.

The latest DEBKA-Net-Weekly out Friday expands on its disclosure of last week that during his visit to Israel, US President Barack Obama struck a deal with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for military action against Syrian chemical weapons. The new issue fleshed out that core decision with exclusive revelations on NATO’s role in setting up the expedition, its participants, targets and ramifications, including likely responses by Moscow and Tehran.
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Both sides to the Syrian conflict appear to have launched a form of poison chemicals against their foes. Western and Middle East military sources say pro-Assad forces may have brought into the Homs battle of Dec. 23 imported gas grenades which Iran used to quell the 2009 Tehran riots. debkafile: Although Jordan claimed Sunday it “would not enter into any alliance to protect itself,” large NATO and US forces have prepared the kingdom for chemical attack. Some intelligence sources estimate Turkey or Israel may be next after Jordan.

The Syrian chemical warfare threat took an epic turn Saturday, Dec. 22 with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s statement that “Syria has “consolidated its chemical weapons in one or two locations… and they are under control.” Russian military advisers training Syria’s military,” he said, “have kept close watch over its chemical arsenal.” debkafile: This was Moscow’s assurance to Washington that Russia had taken care of the danger of Syria’s WMD falling into Islamist terrorist hands, which came close Friday with the rebel assault on al-Safira.

Sources close to the French Defense Ministry reported Friday, Dec. 7, that a Western-Arab military intervention against the Assad regime will begin shortly with the participation of the US, France, Britain, Turkey, Jordan and other anti-Assad Arab nations, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar. debkafile: French and British warships have joined the USS Eisenhower carrier off Syria. The mission would combine an air blitz and special operations forces on the ground for wiping out Assad’s chemical arms stocks, air force and air defense batteries.

Tuesday, Nov. 27, the Middle East military spotlight swung around from Gaza to Syria with the start of US and NATO intervention. A game changer began unfolding with the site survey begun by a joint Turkish-NATO team for the deployment of Patriot Air and Missile Defense Systems manned by American military teams. debkafile: Although billed for “defensive purposes,” the Patriots will in fact impede Syrian air bombardments over all of northern Syria, including the embattled towns of Aleppo and Homs.

At least 11 Russian warships are heading for Syria from their Black Sea and North Sea bases; NATO’s rapid response Maritime Group 2 is on its way to the E. Mediterranean too, and five Israeli warships are already deployed. The French nuclear aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle-R91 is making for the French naval base at Port Zayid, Abu Dhabi, opposite the Strait of Hormuz. In Riyadh, high Saudi officials are convinced a US strike against Iran is coming soon - before or after the November election.

Syria Friday shot down the Turkish Super Phantom jet with the sophisticated self-propelled medium range anti-air Pantsur-1 missile recently supplied by Russia. Short of time to master the improved missile system, the Syrian crews would have called on their Russian instructors to help launch them. debkafile: Moscow and Damascus may have decided to stop the almost daily Turkish air force flights over the Syrian coast for spying on Russian arms deliveries through the Russian bases of Tartus and Latakia.

Syrian rebels have received their first “third generation” anti-tank weapons, 9K115-2 Metis-M and Kornet E, debkafile reports. They are supplied by Saudi and Qatari intelligence agencies following a secret message from President Barack Obama upping the military stake in the effort to oust Assad. It is hoped that the sight of blazing tanks will undermine morale in the Syrian army and regime. Ankara was also advised to start providing Syrian rebels with IEDs for roadside bombing of government vehicles.

On the return flight to Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov filled in the space left by his Prime Minister Dmitri Medvadev’s silence at the G8 summit Saturday, May 20 with a large dose of skepticism on Iran.
Contradicting President Barack Obama’s statement that diplomacy was preferable to military action, he spoke of “many signals that the military option is… realistic.” Less realistic were NATO decisions on the eurozone and the military exit from Afghanistan at the weekend Chicago summit.

Beset on two fronts, Bashar Assad rushed his elite Presidential Guard to Damascus Thursday, May 10, as two massive car bombs demolished the command center of the Syrian military security service’s reconnaissance division in the al Qaza district killed 55 people and injured more than 300. Over to the southeast, debkafile reports 12,000 special operations troops from 17 nations, including the US, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are poised on the Jordanian side of the Syrian border.